Symantec investigating claim hackers have Norton Antivirus code

Symantec Corp. is investigating claims that hackers have acquired the source code for its Norton Antivirus software, which the hacker group threatens to release to the public at an undisclosed time.

A group calling itself the Lords of Dharmaraja posted an Adobe document online Wednesday that it claimed was a glimpse of the source code for the internet security software.

But Symantec spokesman Cris Paden said "no source code was disclosed" in the post, which was a 12-year-old document describing how the software worked, but not the code. Paden said Symantec continues to investigate the hackers' claim that they have source code.

"We take each and every claim very seriously and have a process in place for investigating each incident," said Paden in an email response to questions."To date, we have not detected any inordinate or suspicious rates of traffic or activity going in or out of our networks," he said.

In a post to the site Pastebin, the hackers maintain they discovered the information in a hack of India's military computer network. The group claims to have found source code "of a dozen software companies" which have signed agreements to share code with Indian intelligence agencies.

Pastebin is a 10-year-old Web application that allows users to upload and share software. The post has been removed from the application.

Besides a 200-word statement from the hackers, the post contains a 2,700-word document that claims to be the "specifications required for generating virus definitions."Symantec "confirmed it was a document from 12 years ago saying how the solution worked," Paden said, but it contained no source code for the antivirus software.

The Lords of Dharmaraja haven't claimed responsibility for computer hacking in the past. Dharmaraja is a name for a high-ranking monk in Tibetan Buddhism.

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